or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
37 used & new from £3.23
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Lanark: A Life in Four Books (Canongate Classics)
 
 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book

Lanark: A Life in Four Books (Canongate Classics) (Paperback)

by Alasdair Gray (Author), William Boyd (Introduction)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
Price: £6.41 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £2.58 (29%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Want guaranteed delivery by Thursday, February 11? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
26 new from £4.51 11 used from £3.23

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman

Lanark: A Life in Four Books (Canongate Classics) + How Late it Was, How Late
Price For Both: £13.37

Show availability and delivery details

  • This item: Lanark: A Life in Four Books (Canongate Classics) by Alasdair Gray

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

  • How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman

    In stock.
    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

How Late it Was, How Late

How Late it Was, How Late

by James Kelman
4.2 out of 5 stars (13)  £6.96
Greenvoe

Greenvoe

by George Mackay Brown
4.0 out of 5 stars (1)  £4.79
The Black Album

The Black Album

by Hanif Kureishi
3.5 out of 5 stars (11)  £5.06
Downriver

Downriver

by Iain Sinclair
4.3 out of 5 stars (6)  £6.99
Poor Things

Poor Things

by Alasdair Gray
3.3 out of 5 stars (3)  £5.99
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 573 pages
  • Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd; New edition edition (31 May 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1841959073
  • ISBN-13: 978-1841959078
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.8 x 4.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 13,687 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #1 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > G > Gray, Alasdair
    #1 in  Books > Fiction > Cult Authors > Gray, Alasdair
    #5 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > B > Boyd, William

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Review

"Remarkable... Lanark is a work of loving and vivid imagination, yielding copious riches." Times Literary Supplement " 'It was time Scotland produced a shattering work of fiction in the modern idiom. This is it." Anthony Burgess "I was absolutely knocked out by Lanark. I think it's the best in Scottish literature in the twentieth century" Iain Banks"

Product Description

"Lanark", a modern vision of hell, is set in the disintegrating cities of Unthank and Glasgow, and tells the interwoven stories of Lanark and Duncan Thaw. A work of extraordinary imagination and wide range, its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind's inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying. Widely recognised as a modern classic, Alasdair Gray's magnum opus was first published in 1981 and immediately established him as one of Britain's leading writers. Comparisons have been made to Dante, Blake, Joyce, Orwell, Kafka, Huxley and Lewis Carroll. This new edition should cement his reputation as one of our greatest living writers.
See all Product Description
Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
(1)
Agree with these tags?

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Lanark: A Life in Four Books (Canongate Classics)
87% buy the item featured on this page:
Lanark: A Life in Four Books (Canongate Classics) 4.3 out of 5 stars (6)
£6.41
Lanark (Canongate Classics)
5% buy
Lanark (Canongate Classics) 4.1 out of 5 stars (7)
£20.83
Lanark: A Life in 4 Books
4% buy
Lanark: A Life in 4 Books 4.2 out of 5 stars (9)
How Late it Was, How Late
2% buy
How Late it Was, How Late 4.2 out of 5 stars (13)
£6.96
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
5 star:
 (4)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An exceptional, difficult, incredible book., 19 Oct 2009
By A. Glen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
To review this book properly, I have to make two things totally clear first of all. One, this is probably my favourite book of all time; I've read it four times, studied it extensively at school and university, and written two dissertations on it. Secondly, it's a difficult book. it's opaque, occasionally frustrating, diverse to the point of fragmentation, and bloody massive.

The difficult elements of Lanark are tied in inextricable with the manner of conception. Gray began writing the novel in 1954, and finished it in 1976. Over the course of these twenty two years, the book went through a tremendous amount of redrafting, editing, scrapping and resurrecting. The negative side to this extraordinarily long genesis is that the book does at times seem overly divergent in prose style, and can even feel disjointed. The plus side is, of course, that the final result is an allegorical novel covering over twenty years of ideas, events, arguments and revelations from Gray's life, Scotland and the world in general.

The plot of the novel is half fantastical, half semi-autobiographical. The novel is split into four books, with 1& 2 mapping the life of Duncan Thaw, a Glasgow man based on Gray himself; Book 3&4 focus on Lanark, an amnesiac lost in the bizarre city of Unthank.

Gray makes use of many experimental techniques in the novel, including his own illustrations and creative typesetting, extensive use of pastiche, self-referential jokes, fake scholarly footnotes, references to imaginary chapters and various other devices. Take note; if extensive experimentation with text, language and the elements of construction of fiction do not appeal to you, you will probably find large sections of this book not to your taste, if not unreadable.

However, if you are interested in writers who are openly technical, and choose to foreground the constructed nature of their work, or you're a fan of Iain Banks, David Mitchell, AL Kennedy or other popular writers influenced by Alasdair Gray, this book will probably appeal hugely to you. In terms of predecessors and debts owed, Lanark is a novel self- consciously in the tradition of James Joyce, Cervantes and Lawrence Stern, taking in Huxley and Swift to boot. Lanark is genuinely a powerful, funny, important book. It thoroughly deserves its lofty academic reputation.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent. Loved it., 18 April 2009
By Peter J. Fleming "...evening" (Glasgow, Scotland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I bought this book after trawling the internet for a copy of Gray's 'Unlikely Stories, Mostly' collection and coming up fruitless. I'm glad I got this instead. I don't like to get into the plot or try to summarise a book too much in recommending it to others, and try to avoid cliches like 'social commentary', 'vivid imagery' and 'imaginitive', but Lanark is all of these and alot more (another cliche, sorry). I'm sure some people wouldn't like the odd separation of the four books that make up the titular 'life', but it's worth getting past this. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


 
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Not for me, 8 Sep 2009
By Peter Lee (Manchester ,United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
As a fan of "experimental fiction" who loves the work of the likes of BS Johnson and Mark Z Danielewski, I decided to read "Lanark" on holiday this year. Sadly it wasn't really my cup of tea.

First of all, it has to be said that the book looks and feels lovely - lavish illustrations (albeit a little explicit on the front, which provoked a few looks around the swimming pool!) on the cover and the title page of each "book", plus the covers are made of a slightly floppy paper so it's actually quite nice to hold for a big book, which makes reading a little easier.

But what of the novel? The four books essentially cover two stories, that of Duncan Thaw (set in Glasgow), and secondly the story of Lanark (set in the fictitious Unthank). When you open the book you'll probably think there has been a binding error as it starts with book three, but this is intentional. Books three and four deal with Lanark, whereas one and two focus on Duncan Thaw, so you effectively have one story within the other. Personally I quite enjoyed the Thaw sections, but I really couldn't warm to the Lanark sections, and sadly these form the greater part of the book. There are parallels between the two narratives, some obvious, some obscure, and maybe I was expecting some triumphant conclusion where it all came together, but sadly this didn't come. Yes, it was very well written, but sadly as a whole it just didn't appeal to me.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews  
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars "I've Not Had Enough"
Having been an 'avid' reader since I first picked up a "William" book over fifty years ago, I must have read countless hundreds of novels over that time, 'Classic' or otherwise... Read more
Published 1 month ago by James Morton

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing set book material
At times brilliant, at times maddening in its self-indulgent opacity, this felt too much like an exercise in literary virtuosity, likely to be more satisfying for the author and... Read more
Published on 3 Dec 2007 by G. L. Haggett

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly immense book
My words can't even start to convey the enormity of this magnificent novel, one of the landmarks in twentieth century fiction. Read more
Published on 6 Sep 2007 by Leo McMarley

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject








i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback


Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.